Following the rumblings and complaints bouncing round the internet, and the severe track-side animosity it appears that there is a significant degree of displeasure about how this season in particular has turned out. When you look at what has taken place over the course of the 16 races it took to decide the title, there have been a systematic series of failures, miscommunication and controversies acting to undermine what has been achieved in that period of time. Some of these were set in motion several years ago and without proper maintenance have slowly degenerated to the point we've come to now, ideas and concepts that were brought about from the last time the world thought F1 was broken. The problem is that all the parties with a vested interest in the sport want completely different things, which means no-one can quite agree where things need to go. Even groups of fans from different generations want different things based on the sport as it was when they started following it. 2013 seems to have been a point where all this differences of opinion and 'improvements' seem to have collided and created a mess. To make matters worse there is so much finger pointing looking to explain what has gone wrong, looking for something to blame when there is no such 'magic' solution.
All this brought so much to light because one man in a blue car can go so much faster than everyone else - this is the fourth season where this German has dominated proceedings sometimes more overtly than others. It is not reasonable to question his abilities and the engineering quality of the car he has at his disposal - however it is far more logical to question the environment that has allowed this to happen. Is it because Red Bull are the only ones who have adapted to this new incarnation of F1, and the others are just producing race cars as they always have done. At lot of moaning revolves around funding and budgets, but Ferrari and Mercedes spend more than Red Bull to - the money situation is a major problem but that is a curse that is suppressing competition from the lower end of the grid. But you could spend months and years trying to analyse precisely why of all the teams Red Bull have been so effective since the last big regulation change - once they'd caught up with Brawn GP's 2009 advantage it has been game over. So in this particular rant it is the sporting direction F1 has taken since that change, and the reasons and rationale behind them that is up for discussion.
Tyres
Since Pirelli were asked to get involved with the sport it has been insult and counter insult passed back and forth since race one. The tyre manufacturer designed the compounds to the specification they were given by the powers that be, so all the whining about excessive degradation and tyre quality was not Pirelli's fault, and even the failures were a consequence of Pirelli not being allowed to test with a current spec car under current conditions. So any problems only materialised in race conditions. But let's roll back to why these tyres were commissioned in the first place: It was noted how unpredictable the 2010 Canadian GP was due to tyre degradation on an abrasive track - and therefore the FIA wanted that amount of high wear at every race. This in turn was fuelled by the idea that the on-track racing had stagnated.
Therefore in reality instead of the root causes of the problems preventing overtaking and overall entertainment the solution was to reduce tyre life such that a car would be considerably hobbled by poor pace it could be passed. There was another problem, F1 teams are filled with rather clever people, so any time lost through tyre wear - the engineers would pull back... and so you end up with another battle with one side trying to out do the other with Pirelli stuck in the middle without the tools or opportunities to test their product. This season saw that war come to a head - weaker tyres vs cars able to extract more from them ended in lots of failures. As a result a change was forced through on safety grounds, a change which massively changed the dynamic of the championship. Red Bull became much more powerful and their two main rivals at the time Ferrari, and Lotus dropped back to Mercedes pace - leaving Vettel out on his own to rack up the wins.
The consequences are far more extensive than that Force India and Marussia were severely hampered by the change - loss of position in the constructors championship can have major financial implications for these teams. It has also redefined how the racing takes place, restricting the amount of aggression and challenging driving that can take place without the threat of ruining the tyres. Rather than chasing the car in front, everyone is told to sit back and wait until the pit-stops or a DRS window when it is easy.
DRS and KERs
Both these little widgets came into being as a legacy of the last phase of domination that Schumacher orchestrated and the years immediately following it. In 2008 aerodynamic development had gone mad - each car was bedecked with winglets and huge amounts of aero management pieces. All these gizmos created severe aero disturbances behind the car, and because a following car was so dependant on the air not being disturbed no-one could follow closely without a major pace advantage. Initially KERs was brought in with a overhaul of the amount of aero-dynamics, all designed to lower disturbances and help cars pass each other. It was a solid idea, as it could be used anywhere on track to attack, defend, or gain lap time without guaranteeing a pass. The only significant KERs influenced race was Raikkonen passing Fisichella to win the Belgian GP using the device.
Because that wasn't enough passing - DRS joined the fray. The combination designed to avoid the phenomenon known as the 'Trulli train' because the Toyota out-qualified cars but was so much slower on race day it held up a train of cars. No-one could pass and it hampered racing. Again a solid idea, but... and it is a big but... DRS has been poorly implemented. It is creating false, overly easy passing where one car is completely defenceless to another. Furthermore restricted usage means we all know when and where a pass is coming, so instead of taking a driver by surprise it is the case that a battle will wait until the DRS zone arrives and gain a free place. In other instances it is completely useless, as demonstrated by the amount of cars that tried to pass a Sauber in Korea - varying from team to team, so the FIA have created a race enhancing device that enhances some people's races more than others. Just like the situation with the tyres, it is a solution that has been put in place because of fundamental issues in the way the cars behave and interact with one another in close proximity.
The Tracks
I'm all for F1 going to these new exotic locations the likes of Abu-Dhabi, India and Singapore - but the way that new tracks have been designed and created is depressing, too many generic similarities and trying to play towards the KERs and DRS gimmicks already in place. For example the majority of these new circuits: China, Bahrain, Korea, India etc. have huge DRS straights... effectively saying 'pass me here', where is the variety. This is not long after the Hockkenheimring was altered to eliminate it's massive straights. It is very easy to blame Mr Tilke who is responsible for designing these monstrosities but, even he is working to FIA guidelines which change as seasons go on - for example there was a phase of stupid stylised corners - for example the opening corners in Sepang and Shanghai, and then over-used hairpins and chicanes: Bahrain, Abu-Dhabi and Singapore. All of which might have looked reasonable on design table but in reality fail.
Aside from the layouts there is the matter of the run-off design, acres and acres of tarmac - the principle being that if a driver goes off, they get to come back on again and not damage the car, also as a safety measure vs gravel as the car won't dig in and roll over. Huge accidents have been caused by the gravel launching a car - Zonta in the Belgium qualifying '99 is the obvious example - but it turning everything into a car park the right solution. Well no frankly. There needs to be something at the edge of the track to ensure it is more advantageous to stay on track, a while line and some paint on the other side is not going to cut it. It too has had some additional consequences - recently leading with the spate of decisions against drivers gaining an advantage and passing off track. This should not be possible - going off in general should not be an advantageous act and should not result in gaining an advantage. It has also lead to drivers taking unnecessary risks because they know they can get away with it if anything happens. Putting proper boundaries in place prevents this and makes overtaking much more skilled than it currently is... if the cars allow it.
The Regulations
Both certain technical and sporting regulations have been introduced with the best interests but have produced the opposite, some of which have then been patched with the tyres and passing gizmos to hide the underlying damage. Firstly the relationship between qualifying and the race, the newer three part qualifying process is a major improvement over the Friday pre-qualifying that was tried out and the single lap sessions of the mid 2000's - but it needs work. Forcing drivers to start on the same tyres as they completed their fastest lap on is a little silly. It hasn't been as bad of late, but there have been many cases where it becomes advantageous not to take part in Q3 - and that is wrong.
On a tecnhical note, erasing innovation seems counter-productive and placing strict limits on what engineers can do doesn't help - I can appreciate the need to reduce costs and pin back the dominance of aerodynamics lest we end up in 2008 again, but stifling creativity is not ideal. Look at Renault for example, they ran with mass-dampers in the Alonso era, exhaust blown diffusers in 2011 both of which were subsequently banned. Then there was McLaren with the F-Duct - also banned, flexible wings - also banned. Agreed some things are pushing it too far, like launch and traction control devices, but we need some diversity such that all cars are different. Of course there is the problem that complete freedom benefits the richer teams more than the poorer ones - so there is a necessity to balance parity with technical innovation.
So... is F1 broken
I think broken is such a strong description - there are definitely some problems with the way things are working, and the minor fixes (DRS, KERs and those tyres) have reaped short term benefits but a more permanent solution for the direction of the sport - less so. 2013 may have been a year of domination, which is not a problem, just a sign of the engineering and technical prowess of Red Bull and the skill of Vettel forging a perfect storm of victories. The issues run deeper than that within the fabric of the sport and were present before this season - what the winning combination has done is remove the distractions concealing what needs to be fixed. The internet and TV pundits alike have been making suggestions for a while on different topics and different problems - in the next instalment of this rant, the blog reveals it's multi-faceted series of solutions to fixing the cracks.
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